Quote of the Day (Jacques Barzun, on ‘The Need for a Body of Common Knowledge’)

“The need for a body of common knowledge and common reference does not disappear when a society is pluralistic. On the contrary, it grows more necessary, so that people of different origins and occupation may quickly find familiar ground and as we say, speak a common language. It not only saves time and embarrassment, but it also ensures a kind of mutual confidence and goodwill. One is not addressing an alien, as blank as a stone wall, but a responsive creature whose mind is filled with the same images, memories, and vocabulary as oneself. Otherwise, with the unstoppable march of specialization, the individual mind is doomed to solitude and the individual heart to drying up.”— Columbia Univ. teacher, historian, educator, cultural critic and administrator Jacques Barzun (1907-2012), “Of What Use the Classics Today?” (1987)

Quote of the Day (Jacques Barzun, on Morale-Sapping Gadgets)

“Many of us affect a tone of irony about gadgets, as if we lived always in realms above and dealt with trifles only during rare descents from sublime thoughts. The truth is that more and more of the important things in life turn on pinpoints. Our frustrations begin in trivialities — a telephone out of order, a car that will not start, a claim check whose number has been misread. The thing in cellophane that cannot be got at — plain to the sight but sealed like an egg — is the modern version of the torture of Tantalus. Catastrophes we will deal with like heroes, but the bottle top that defies us saps our morale, like the tiny arrows of the Lilliputians that maddened Gulliver and set his strength at naught.”— Columbia Univ. teacher, historian, educator, cultural critic and administrator Jacques Barzun (1907-2012), God’s Country and Mine: A Declaration of Love Spiced With a Few Harsh Words (1954)

Quote of the Day (Jacques Barzun, on Teaching and the Regard for It)

“Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” —French-born American historian Jacques Barzun (1907-2012), Teacher in America (1945)

This school year, let’s hope American society recovers that lost regard. After all, with COVID-19, the stresses on the profession and the instructional means for reaching students are unprecedented in number, scope and potential impact.

Quote of the Day (Jacques Barzun, on ‘The Desire to Annihilate’ in Politics)

“The scrimmage of politics is for the purpose of determining who shall transact the government's business. If in the struggle the desire to accomplish one's purpose turns into a desire to annihilate one's opponent, the outcome is civil war. Historically, this desire to annihilate finds its support and justification in Intellect, in ideas, for ideas are clear-cut and divide. Material interests can be compromised, principles cannot."—French-American historian and educator Jacques Barzun (1907-2012), The House of Intellect (1959)

Quote of the Day (Jacques Barzun, on Life and the ‘Speechless Real’)

"If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real."— French-American cultural historian and educator Jacques Barzun (1907-2012), The House of Intellect (1959)

Quote of the Day (Jacques Barzun, on Baseball)

"Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”—Jacques Barzun, God's Country and Mine: A Declaration of Love Spiced with a Few Harsh Words (1973)

Play ball!